Article Contributed by Mountain Home Music Company
Published on 2026-08-28
“Who is the best guitar player around today?” was the question posed on-air by broadcaster Howard Stern to bluegrass phenom Billy Strings back in November of last year, and the answer came back almost instantaneously: “Well, I think Bryan Sutton is one of the best musicians that I know. I look up to him as a musician, and he’s kind of one of my mentors…he’s just a really musical cat.”
That’s high-level praise from a high-level colleague, but it’s nothing new when it comes to Sutton’s acclaimed career — and for the past year, he’s been releasing a steady stream of duet singles with a group of partners that includes, among others, a generous portion of younger talents to whom Sutton has been, as he has with Billy Strings, a mentor, model and friend.
Now, those singles — along with two unreleased tracks, including a previously unheard duet with the legendary Tony Rice — have been collected into a Mountain Home Music Company release, From Roots to Branches, Vol. 1, that not only celebrates the 20th anniversary of Sutton’s 2006 all-duets release, Not Too Far From The Tree, but makes a compelling case that Strings hit the nail right on the head with his answer to Stern.
“I feel fortunate to be able to share what I've called these sort of ‘musical conversations’ with friends of mine,” Sutton says. “I am as much of a fan of any of these people as any other guitarist out there, or any music fan. And so to take the opportunity to sit more intimately, with just two guitars…what we have here in this project is kind of unique. So I'm excited to share that with people and to see people enjoy it.”
“Until I started talking to Mountain Home about what a release of all this stuff would look like,” he continues, “I never really knew exactly what I was going to do or what I wanted to happen. I knew that I wanted to try to collect a lot of duets; it sort of felt like I was just capturing things as I could and as these folks became available — and I kept on doing that even as the process of releasing the singles got under way. It’s not like I recorded a bunch of stuff and it sat in a can, or like we mixed everything all at once. And that’s kind of cool — I think that fits how I got into this in the first place: ‘let's just go and see how it may end.’ It's really more about a process than a result.”
Even so, the results have exceeded expectations, as each release found its place with eager listeners, and in the overarching scheme articulated when the series was first announced: a nod to the earlier project with previous unreleased duets from since-departed legends Doc Watson and Tony Rice; exchanges with colleagues from beyond the bluegrass realm Joe Bonamassa and Tommy Emmanuel; and a sizeable assortment of bluegrass colleagues ranging from his contemporary, Kenny Smith, to next-generation players Trey Hensley, Sierra Hull, Jake Stargel, Chris Eldridge and Cody Kilby — and, of course, Billy Strings, whose collaboration on “The Devil Went Down to Deep Gap” features a full-band backing Sutton’s and Strings’ flatpicking and heavy metal (!) exchanges that are as much duels as duets.
WATCH THE MUSIC VIDEO FOR “THE DEVIL WENT DOWN TO DEEP GAP”
Listeners are sure to be especially excited about the collection’s focus track, a previously unreleased, early-2000s duet with Tony Rice on the venerable Carter Family song, “Storms Are on the Ocean,” which Sutton says honors the memory of Mountain Home founder Mickey Gamble, who passed away earlier this year.
“When I was leaving high school,” Sutton recalls, “I was hanging out at the Hear Here recording studio in Asheville, where Mickey Gamble would hire Tony to come in and produce records — and Tony did his great Crossings gospel record there with David Johnson and Tim Surrett. So it was a really neat place to be; I was trying to find my feet right out of high school, trying to make a career, and here’s Tony Rice hanging out. I would have coffee with him at the studio, or go to lunch and sit in his car and listen to Earl Klugh. So I see, in this new Tony Rice song, a connection both with Not Too Far From the Tree and with Mickey, who helped us meet each other so many years ago, and it feels like a cool way of bringing it all together.”
Partnered with masters long hailed as the finest exemplars of flatpicking, acclaimed contemporaries and newer players — some already renowned, others on their way — From Roots to Branches, Vol. 1 places Bryan Sutton at the very center of today’s acoustic guitar scene.
From Roots To Branches Vol. 1 is streaming in Dolby Atmos spatial audio on Apple Music, Amazon Music and TIDAL. Listen to it HERE.
About Bryan Sutton
There may not be another acoustic guitar player quite like Bryan Sutton. Veteran by now of many hundreds of recording sessions, he’s spent long years bringing just the right touch and tone to music heard by millions — think Garth Brooks, Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood, Blake Shelton and Luke Combs, for starters — while quietly maintaining a devoted following among the most dedicated fans and exponents of the demanding art of bluegrass, newgrass, folk and swing flatpicking.
The western North Carolina native began his career as a denizen of southeastern recording studios, quickly building a resume featuring a slew of Southern Gospel recordings before moving to Nashville in 1995. There he soon found himself in the limelight as a key contributor to Ricky Skaggs’ return to bluegrass, turning in jaw-dropping performances on such favorites as “Get Up John.” At the turn of the century, he traded in road life for regular work in the city’s recording studios, where he soon became one of the most sought-after players for a multitude of hitmaking country music and genre-jumping sessions — even as he embellished his bluegrass credentials with a series of acclaimed solo albums and guest appearances on the genre’s top albums while sharing his knowledge as a popular online instructor for literally thousands of eager students.
And by the time he celebrated his 20th anniversary in Music City, USA, he had accumulated 10 International Bluegrass Music Association Guitar Player of the Year trophies — more than any other recipient in the award’s 35-year history. Most recently, he teamed up with younger-generation bluegrass ambassador Billy Strings for the 2025 collaboration, Live at the American Legion.
As the 20th anniversary of his epochal 2006 Not Too Far From the Tree: A Collection of Duets with Heroes and Friends approached, Sutton began to plan a follow-up — but this time, instead of featuring mentors and peers like the original album’s Tony Rice, George Shuffler, Norman Blake and David Grier, his vision was broadened.
“I'd been thinking ever since that it would be fun to do another version where I have more players of my generation, or even younger, to revisit this idea and capture and record some duets — just me playing with friends and younger players who still influence me,” the master musician noted, and in the summer of 2025, as he embarked on a month-long tour with Strings to support Live at the American Legion, Mountain Home Music Company announced that they had partnered with him to present those duets as the From Roots to Branches series.
